Aging, lack of exercises, or excessive use of muscles by exercises may cause disorder in posture or excess load to some muscles. As a result, generation of pains or limitations in movements may be caused.
Particularly in lumbar region, this may lead to limitations in movements and inconveniences as follows: due to weakened abdominal muscles for supporting musculus erector spinae, lumbar lordosis is increased; due to weakened musculus gluteus maximus and musculus gluteus medius that play important roles as muscles for stabilizing the tilt of the pelvis and allowing the hip joint to function with stability, and further due to weakened musculus biceps femoris, musculus semitendinosus, musculus semimembranosus, etc. that are called hamstrings, the pelvis is liable to incline backward and lumbar pains are generated; and due to weakened hamstrings, the function of musculus obliquus externus abdominis does not work well, and the upper body cannot be supported adequately, so that the supporting point when rotating the hips is not fixed, and the hips are not rotated (twisted) smoothly.
Furthermore, backward inclination of the pelvis causes the hips to be flat. Coupled with lumbar lordosis, it also causes flank muscles to be creased and compressed, and also causes the twisting angle of the hips to the right and left to decrease. As a result, the entire figure becomes like an elderly person, and moreover, broken posture causes not only lumbar pains, but also indirectly causes knee joint pain.
Conventionally, a garment for figure control has been proposed in which, in order to provide a figure control function, for example, the function of keeping the bulges of the hips in a high position, a cloth piece is applied onto a predetermined part of the garment main body to increase the straining force in the predetermined part. Sports tights for supporting specific muscles in order to assist the wearer's abilities of exercises such as sports, etc. also have been proposed.
To prevent the above-described lumbar lordosis and stabilize the hip joint, thereby preventing lumbar pains and limitations in movements and reducing the limitations in the movements of the hip joint, for example, the following methods have been used in general as conventional methods:
(1) applying a taping to lumbar region, hypogastric region, etc.; and
(2) wearing a belt-like corset by winding it around lumbar region, hypogastric region, etc. in the same manner as in (1).
However, in the method (1), it is difficult to perform a taping by oneself, so that it is necessary to have another person perform a taping. Because an inexperienced person cannot perform a taping, it is necessary to have an expert perform a taping each time, so that it is inconvenient to attach and remove the taping. In addition, a taping cannot be worn for a long time and also may cause skin disorder.
As the method (2), there is a method in which lumbar pains are alleviated by increasing abdominal pressure or preventing hyperextension of vertebrae lumbalis so as to reduce the load to the back muscles. There is another method in which it is intended to stabilize the hip joint by pressing the hip joint strongly and circularly. However, these methods limit the movements of the wearer exceedingly, and during daily activities or when playing sports, etc., the corset has very poor wearing comfort and is hard to wear.